


Backroads and Grocery Store Parking Lots

by bluebox_dragon



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, nile works through immortality in the backseat of a minivan, the road trip no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25742434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebox_dragon/pseuds/bluebox_dragon
Summary: Nile really, truly, absolutely, has no idea why or how she ended up in the back seat of a minivan on the easternmost point of the United States. There’s a bag of swords carefully buckled into the window seat on her left, and a cooler of (mostly) alcohol shoved into the footwell of the window seat to her right.--A road trip across the United States gives everyone a chance to work through their emotions, and their relationships with one another.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 169





	1. Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> this is half shitpost and half letting the characters work through their emotions. There will be midnight fist fights behind a dennys but thats about all i can promise.

Nile really, truly, absolutely, has no idea why or how she ended up in the back seat of a minivan on the easternmost point of the United States. There’s a bag of swords carefully buckled into the window seat on her left, and a cooler of (mostly) alcohol shoved into the footwell of the window seat to her right. 

About 45 minutes into the drive, she had asked if she could possibly switch seats with either of them. The question had been abandoned after Joe and Booker got into yet another argument (this time about the ever so important topic of proper van packing), so she resigns herself to the middle seat of a van that probably belonged to a soccer mom in a past life. 

It’s better to just accept one’s lot in life sometimes, when the alternative is creative cursing in multiple languages (some of which haven’t been spoken in centuries). She puts her headphones in after that, letting the blaring music drown out the hurt and betrayal being tossed about in too small a space.

They’ve been traveling down barely paved back country roads for hours, with only non-illuminated barns and the eery glowing eyes of what she can only assume are deer to break the monotony of pine forests that look oh so easy to get lost in, especially on a night as dark as this. The stars may be bright out here, so far away from any cities, but they cannot touch the growing deepness of a forest older than the state it resides in.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Nile asks, when Andy makes a sharp turn into what looks to be a small field at the foot of a wooden hill. She had asked this question before, once on the plane to Canada, and once again when they crossed the border into Maine using fake IDs and even faker Quebecois accents. She hadn’t gotten a real answer either time.

“Nowhere, now.” Andy says, slamming the brakes in a manner that would be far more concerning if most of the passengers of the van could not actually die. “Everyone get out.” 

Nile isn’t entirely sure if they’ve reached their destination, or if Andy has just reached the end of her patience, but she decides not to question it and follows Nicky in clambering out the side door. 

She shivers, wishing she’d thought to bring a thicker sweatshirt, while Nicky slams the door of the van once, and then again when the latch doesn’t catch the first time. She doesn’t even notice that the others had started walking without them until Nicky puts a warm hand on her shoulder, drawing her attention away from the grass and to his face. He smiles and tilts his head towards the others, who are walking towards the edge of the forest.

“We should catch up, or we will be left behind.” He says, steering her in the correct direction.

It’s incredible, how his voice doesn’t break the silence of the night, merely blending in with the sounds of the wind in the trees, the creatures that call these woods home, and somewhere much further away, the sound of the ocean lapping at rocks.

“Why’re we here?” Nile asks. She tries to match his tone of voice, but it comes out wrong, and the skittering within the trees confirms that whatever peace had been there before, she has broken. She feels like an intruder.

Nicky shrugs, “There are many things to do on a mountain at night.” He doesn’t elaborate any further, and Nile doesn’t push, she doesn’t really want to know what Nicky could come up with to do on a mountain at night, especially if it were just him and Joe.

“About half a mile up.” Booker says when Nile and Nicky catch up to the others. It’s too loud and too sudden, his voice breaks the silence the same way Nile’s had. But Nile doesn’t get a chance to dwell on it, when Booker just turns around and starts up the trail, not waiting for anyone to walk with him. 

No one makes an attempt to match Bookers pace, so Nile doesn’t either, instead lingering behind Nicky and Joe (NickyandJoe, she thinks, the way they move together is more as one than as two). They don’t make any noise on the trail, no broken sticks, or crunching leaves. It just amplifies the noise that her feet make on every impact, a stick, a leaf, even the scuffing of the soles of her shoes makes too much noise.

The end of the trail comes quickly, bringing large rocks and a cliff face that oversees only the dark ocean, because there is nothing beyond that. 

It looks like the end of the goddamn world, and it’s beautiful.

————-

By the time Joe gets them all corralled into a semi-circle at the edge of the cliff, the sky has shifted from the darkest of blues to something closer to charcoal. Nile thinks back to her high school art classes, and the pallets they were taught to mix paint on, but she can’t even begin to imagine what combination of paint could possibly capture the colours starting to splay across the horizon. 

“I’m angry.” Andy says, breaking the silence that has been growing and growing since the beginning of the trail. 

Half a mile is a lot of silence to shatter, but Andy seems intent on going further than that.

“I’m angry,” She repeats, this time addressed to the ocean, “And I don’t have enough time left to deal with it.”

“Boss-,” Booker starts, but he doesn’t get anywhere with it, whatever words he had intended to say die a quick death when Joe’s glare reaches them.

“You talk about your own shit,” Andy says, leveling her own look at Booker “Or you don’t talk. You know the rules.”

Booker snaps his mouth shut, bringing back the silence.

“For once, I don’t have a word for how I feel,” This time, its Joe who speaks, who doesn’t so much shatter the silence, but carefully dissect it, “In all my years, this is something new, and I am so fucking…” He sighs, and finishes the sentence in a language that Nile doesn’t recognize, but she thinks she understands anyways, the exhausted hurt that has clung to his voice since London saturates his words and the air surrounding them. 

“I’m sorry.” Booker says, an apology, a desperate statement, an offer.

“That does not fix anything.” Nicky responds, and while Nile can’t be entirely sure, she thinks it’s the first time Nicky has actually spoken to Booker since before the lab, before everything. She wants to leave, to let them have this conversation in a place where she can’t see it. 

She would do a lot to not witness this conversation, including sharing her own vaguely formed feelings that have been simmering since Afghanistan, never truly taking form until she forces them out of her mouth. 

“I think I’m mourning myself.” 

The molten gold of the sunrise bears witness to her words, and something inside her chest cracks wide open, leaving despair and confusion in its wake. The dissonance nearly kills her, how the grief that chokes her from the inside becomes so clear in what could be the most beautiful place on earth. 

“I died, and I think that who I was before never made it out of Afghanistan.” She continues, past the lump in her throat. 

“You will find her again.” Nicky promises, so soft and so gentle. So sure of something that Nile thinks may be impossible. It doesn’t make her feel better.

Joe wraps an arm around her shoulders, offering a tangible comfort that she isn’s sure how to accept. She leans into the touch, letting him try to soothe the ache that hasn’t let up since her first death.

They stand there, once again wrapped up in their own private silences, until the sun is halfway up the sky, and even the ocean seems to have woken up. 

———-

Nile straps herself back into the backseat of the van, between the swords and the alcohol. She doesn’t try to fight her position in the way back, even when everyone else trades spots, Nicky and Joe now taking over the front seat while Booker and Andy take the middle row.

“Where to next?” She finds herself asking no one in particular, she has a feeling that they don’t know anymore than she does.

Joe turns around from the passenger seat and smiles at her. “Wherever.”

Then he pulls out a gazette that might actually be older than Nile is, “But first, we will stop at the nearest McDonalds.”

Nicky snorts, then puts the van into drive.


	2. Blunt

Nile isn’t entirely sure who has possession of the aux cord at the moment, but the Fall Out Boy currently blaring from the speakers suggests that it’s Booker. 

She sighs heavily, moving her legs to rest on the (mostly empty) cooler of alcohol. Her pleas too switch to one of the window seats have been completely in vain, and at this point she has completely given up.

They’ve been on the road for more than two days now, making their way slowly through Maine, which has had many more tourist attractions than she had originally thought. They had spent nearly four hours in the tiny city of Portland, where Booker had managed to get spectacularly drunk at the only queer club they could find, and then Nicky had held him up by collar as he puked in the parking lot of a grocery store that Nile was nearly certain only existed within the state. 

They leave Maine on backroads, leaving Nile with nothing but bad memories and high emotions. Nile thinks that there’s a good probability that this is how the rest of the trip is going to go. God, if this is what immortality is like, she might understand the alcoholism that runs rampant throughout their small group. 

Not to pull a Booker, but she kind of wishes that she’d stayed dead. 

——-

They only make it 40 miles into Vermont before Joe decides that they need to stop at the next grocery store.

“I am going to die if we don’t stop for food soon.” Is actually his exact words, but Andy seems to take this as ‘Pull into the sketchiest store you can find, please.’ 

The grocery store that Andy pulls into looks like a better place to buy drugs than to buy milk or eggs. Nile thinks that the possibility of the store being staffed by anyone older than college students is slim to none. The paint on the outside of the building is pealing badly, but even if it wasn’t, Nile doesn’t think it would have been a very nice color. 

She stares up at the shaky luminescent letters that spell out ‘HAORD’, which to be fair, half of the letters are not currently lit up, but it doesn’t instill in her that much confidence about the merchandise.

They pile out of the van one by one, all stoping for a second to stretch and groan as they work out the tension of spending the last four hours stationary in a shitty 90’s minivan. 

Andy and Booker head towards the entrance of the store immediately, not waiting for the others to finish stretching (or, in Joe’s case, tying his shoes, as he’d taken a 3 hour nap with his his bare feet on the headrest of Booker’s seat)

Nile hangs behind with Nicky and Joe, waiting while they have a whispered conversation is what she thinks is Arabic, but could very well be any other language with how hushed their tones are. 

She scuffs her shoes against the pavement, the loneliness that always wells up in her chest when she watches them almost chokes her. Finally they pull apart, Nicky pressing a kiss against Joe’s cheek before turning further into the parking lot instead of towards the store.

“Have fun.” Joe says, winking at Nicky.

Nicky sends a mock solute towards their direction, before giving Joe a playful glare, “And you better get the good snacks, habibi. I will know if you decide to be cheap.”

Joe blows a kiss towards Nicky’s retreating back, and Nile regrets every decision that led her to this situation. Immortality absolutely isn’t worth it if she has to share the years with the worlds sappiest couple. 

———-

Her theory about the staff is proven correct when She and Joe enter the building to be greeted by a bored looking teenager who looks up from him phone and says, “Liquor is aisle 13.” Before resuming whatever he’s typing, or watching. Nile is up to date with the current apps enough to know that he’s probably on TikTok, if he’s not texting his highschool sweetheart.

Joe laughs lightly at the cashier’s assumptions, and wraps an arm around Nile’s shoulders as he leads her to the chip aisle. “What are your opinions on Chex Mix?” He asks, as though her answer will reveal the deepest corners of her soul, and not her taste in generic American snack food.

“It’s… okay?” She answers. Chex Mix really wasn’t a topic that she’s given much thought to, if she was being entirely honest.

“Mm,” Joe hums, grabbing three family sized packs of the snack mix in question, “It is one of the only good things to come out of America in recent years.” 

Nile nods, not entirely sure how to respond to such a statement. She grabs a bag of salt and vinegar chips, just to give herself something to hold on too. 

“We can also thank America for giving us you,” Joe says, already halfway down the aisle, “Do not sell yourself short.”

Nile won’t cry in the middle of a shitty grocery store in a shitty state that is nothing like her home, even if it’s in the same country. 

———-

Nicky is leaning against the side of the van, hood up and head down, when they finally make it out of the store. He looks up when they get close, throwing a small grin towards Joe.

“Successful mission?” Joe asks.

“Of course,” Nicky says, “I only get the best for you.”

If Nile didn’t know any better, she’d think they were talking about drugs. Then Nicky pulls two bulging ziplock bags out from the pocket of his hoodie, tossing one to Joe and the other to Booker.

“And I only get the worst for you.” Nicky says, this time addressing Booker.

Booker holds the baggy up to the street lamp, inspecting the contents with a frown. “Is this… roach weed?”

Nile nearly chokes on her own spit. 

———

Nile blames the US military, and her companions collective thousands of years experience with smoking, for how quickly she falls behind the rest of them.

She can’t be entirely sure, but she doesn’t think she’s ever been this high in her entire life. She’d made the decision to tap out three joints ago, but no one else in the van seems to be even half as affected as she is. Joe and Andy are passing a joint back and forth while Nicky rolls another on the cover of a novel that she thinks belongs to Booker. 

She watches, fascinated and hypnotized, as Nicky’s hands move deftly over the paper, not pausing for even a moment as Joe holds the joint to his lips so that Nicky isn’t missing out while he prepares their next hit.

“Yeah?” Joe asks when he pulls his hand away from Nicky, holding the joint out to her. She manages to shake her head, which might have been a bad decision, since the entire world swims with the movement, sliding into kaleidoscopes of color and sound (she can See the sounds, fuck). 

“I think that Nile may be, as the kids say, fucked up.” Nicky says. Well, Nile thinks it was Nicky that said it, but whoever it is, the words are completely true: Nile is fucked up. “I read that one on the internet.” The voice continues smugly.

There’s a warm hand running over her shoulder, which may be the only thing tethering her to Earth. Nile slumps into the contact, barely lifting her head when the person responsibly for the hand adds another and shifts her whole body so that she’s leaning against something warm (the window? No, it can’t be.)

“Do you remember the first time you smoked with Andy?” Another voice asks, and while Nile tries her hardest to open her eyes and direct her attention towards the voice, she finds it nearly impossible.

“Mm,” Comes the reply, “I think that was the time I fell off of the tower of Pisa.” 

Nile fades out of consciousness to the sound of soft laughter, and the smell of quality weed mixed with the earthy stench of roach weed.

“I think she has lasted longer than any of us did, the first time.” Are the last words Nile hears before slipping under completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not promise quality, and quality i will not deliver. In my defense, I have written the entirety of this fic while under the influence of something or another (I am of age, don't worry). Next chapter will feature connecticut, fast food burritos and nile realizing the full extent to which she will literally live through eternity


	3. Taco Bell

It turns out, Connecticut really isn’t that much different than Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, or any of the other states they’ve visited in the last few days.

Well, maybe the roads are a little bit better paved, but Nile thinks that may have more to do with the fact that Joe has taken over the drivers seat than the actual conditions of the road. She’s not actually going to say anything about it: Andy is a little bit scary, and she thinks she’d hurt Nicky’s feeling is she disparaged his driving.

They’ve been driving through the back roads of Connecticut for a few hours now, (she thinks they would’ve reached some sort of destination by now, if Joe wasn’t pulling into every single side road and neighborhood, rambling gently about the architecture to Nicky) and while Nile has been content to watch the passing scenery through the window, she’s also spent that last four days in a car and would jump at any chance to step outside of the 1994 Dodge Caravan (yeah, she looked up the make and model of the car, sue her.)

The car is near silent, beyond the rumble of the road and the slow breathing of five people more used to combat than to road trips.

The silence doesn’t last long (it never does), broken by Booker’s stomach rumbling loudly from the seat behind Joe.

“Shut up.” Andy says, not looking away from the cemetery passing outside her window.

“Boss…” Joe says, cutting himself off.

Nile accidentally catches his eye in the rearview mirror, when the sound of his voice startles her into looking upward. He sends her a quick smile and friendly wink, she looks away.

“We should probably consume something other than beer.” Joe concludes, after refocusing his attention on Andy.

“Hmph.” Andy grunts.

Joe must take this as agreement, as he makes a sharp turn after a blue sign that says ‘Coast Guard Academy: 40 miles.”

Nile almost laughs, when she realizes where they’ve pulled into.

Taco Bell.

She doesn’t complain, just piles out of the back of the van after Andy, but before Booker.

————-

“Do you want guacamole?” The kid behind the register asks.

“Life’s too short not too.” She jokes. Or, well, she tries to.

The words die halfway out of her mouth, and she really owes it to the apathy of fast food workers that she doesn’t get a response beyond “Do you want anything to drink with that?”

But Nicky is standing only a step behind her, and there’s no way he missed this, and God. She’s not getting out of this easily. There’s something sitting high in her chest, choking off the ends of each breath, and fuck. Crying is a Taco Bell has got to be a whole new low.

There’s a hand on the small of her back thats both warm and steady, she leans into it without thinking, pressing her back into Nicky’s shoulder, when he steps up into her personal space.

She lets Nicky lead her away from the counter, so that Joe and Booker can order their food and pay. She doesn’t even realize that she’s been led all the way out of the restaurant until the acrid scent of stale piss and garbage hits her.

She lets go of Nicky in favor of leaning against the nearest flat surface, letting her head crack backwards as she loses her will to hold it upright.

“I’m going to be here forever.” Nile says, back pressed hard against the crumbling wall of the shitty liquor store adjacent to the Taco Bell.

“Yes.” Is all Nicky responds, answering her words for the question they were.

“In a hundred years, this place…” She takes a deep breath, trying to calm the chokehold on her throat, “It’s not going to be here. These people,” Another breath, that barely sneaks through, “They won’t be here. We won’t be here.”

Nicky just nods, “Even if we stand at this exact spot, a hundred years from now,” He moves towards her as he speaks, but she moves away, “We will be somewhere else. This space exists here and now, and will not exist again.”

Nile wants to scream.

Instead she scrubs a hand over her face, taking comfort in the rough motion. The world isn’t gentle, why should she be. There’s violence boiling in her blood, but the only person it’s directed at is herself and, fuck, she doesn’t know how to deal with this.

There’s no immortality orientation, and she’s dealing with every second of the fall out. She _is_ the fall out.

“How do you live with it?” She asks, instead of shredding her fists against the worn brick behind her.

“I didn’t, at first.” Nicky says with a shrug.

She doesn’t hold back this time, lets the scream bubble out of her chest, directs all of her frustration and grief at Nicky.

He takes it. And when she finishes, when her chest is empty and her stomach roils with how little there is to nourish her soul (what is left of her, if she has to leave her entire life behind?) When she is done, crumpled on the ground, in a dirty alley that even the most desperate wouldn’t occupy; when she has fallen to the lowest point of her minuscule lifespan, Nicky sits beside her (the side with only dirty cardboard, not the side with the suspicious puddle) and offers the solid, silent, presence she has learned to associate with him.

Then he offers her a joint.

Nile chokes on her own laughter, her amusement drowned out and amplified by the grief that has hollowed out a home in her lungs.

She takes the joint, and the lighter that Nicky hands her.

——

By the time they make it back to the minivan (that goddamn minivan) Nile is floating millimeters above the ground (she’s not _high_ , per se, just toasty) and Nicky is grinning at the ground in the way that she’s learned means he’s feeling about the same.

Joe hands over now cold bags of shitty fast food tacos with a gentle smile. It means the world to Nile, that he doesn’t try to talk (doesn’t try to make her talk, not with an audience there.)

But what makes her heart lungs seize with gratitude is when Joe moves the bag of swords into the middle row, leaving an empty seat next to Nile that Nicky claims, lending his body heat and steady shoulder for her to lean on.

“Everyone buckled up?” Andy asks from the front seat, as if she isn’t the only one in the car that could possibly die.

“Just a sec’, Boss.” Joe says, lovingly buckling the bag of swords into the seat next to him.

Nile shifts further into Nicky’s side, carefully opening her tacos on her lap.

She’s never going to live this moment again, might as well enjoy it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have never been to taco bell, but i think that when I do go, I too will have an existential crisis in the alley out back


	4. The Promised Parking Lot Fist Fight

Pennsylvania is, in Nile’s opinion, the worst state they’ve been too so far. They haven’t seen anything but cows for at least an hour, and even worse, the bickering between Joe and Booker has reached what Nile’s mom had always called ‘The Point of No Return’ when Nile had been little and still fought with her brother on a daily basis (she would give anything to take it all back, to have that time back). 

“You can’t understand!” Booker is saying when Nile tunes back into their argument. 

Nile doesn’t necessarily agree with that statement, and it seems that Joe doesn’t either.

“Yes, because in your 200 some-odd years of life, you discovered emotions that I have never felt in 900 years.” Joe retorts, throwing his hands in the air for emphasis. “You aren’t the only person on the planet to lose the ones you love, and you certainly aren’t the only one to ever feel lonely.”

“You have Nicky!” Booker nearly shouts.

Joe does shout.

“Nicky isn’t the only fucking person in my life!” 

Nicky runs a hand down Joe’s shoulder, silent comfort and support, as always.

“I have loved and lost more people than you can count,” Joe adds, lowering his voice when Andy mouths ‘Inside voices’ in the rearview mirror. “It’s not a fucking excuse, Booker.”

“I’m sorry.” Booker says, sinking further into the passenger seat. Any fight that had previously inhabited him has leached out, sunk into the floor like the years and years of questionable stains already there.

“I know.” Joe replied, just as worn out.

——-

They don’t stop for lunch, Andy quoting the (nonexistant) time-table they apparently need to stick to. It’s not have been the best tactical decision Nile has ever seen her make, in fact, it just might be the worst.

They’ve gone nearly 8 hours since last stopping for a meal, or at all (the gas mileage on the van is incredible) and tensions are running high. The bickering has reached an all time high, with even Nicky snapping at Joe when one too many limbs ended up on Nicky’s lap.

“Just stop at the next grocery store, I am begging you.” Joe says, turning his best puppy eyes towards Andy.

“There’s food in the cooler.” Andy says, not removing her eyes from the road.

Nile raises her hand, then realizes her mistake and quickly lowers it again with a self-conscious huff. 

“Yes?” Booker asks, with the tone of someone who’s taught high school age kids on multiple occasions.

“Yeah, so there’s actually no food in the cooler.” Nile points out, opening the cooler in question to survey the options “There’s like, half a bottle of whiskey, and maybe two shots of vodka left.” 

Both Nile and the cooler are thrown forward, nearly into the next row of seats, when Andy slams the breaks. The only thing that stops Nile from hitting the floor is the arm that Nicky throws across her chest at the last second.

“We’re out of vodka?” Andy asks, at the same time that Nile yells, “Did you mom arm me?”

“Yes, and possibly. I do not know what mom arming is.” Nicky answers both of them, “Now can we stop at a grocery store?”

Andy jerks the car back onto the road, one hand on the steering wheel, while she hits Booker across the chest with the other, telling him to find them a store on the ‘PGS’.

“GPS, boss.” Booker says, “And take the next right.”

———-

“Trust me,” Booker says, absentmindedly talking up a particular brand of frozen burritos as they exit the van.

Nile thinks that he shouldn’t have used those particular words, and a quick glance at the tight grimace on Andy’s face as she leans against the van next to Nile, confirms that thought.

Joe chokes on a laugh, at that particular expression. It’s not a kind laugh.

Booker must realize his mistake, if the way he slams the front door of the van is anything to go by. The door doesn’t catch, bounces back towards Nile with the same force. But Booker has turned away, towards where Nicky and Joe are leaning against the shopping cart corral. 

Nile grabs the door, shutting it as quietly as possible.

“What do you want me to do?” Booker yells.

“Nothing.” Joe responds, shoving off the metal rail, moving close enough to Booker that they could be slow dancing. 

Booker shoves a hand through his hair, trying to force it back, but it flops forward again. He looks everywhere except at Joe, searching the air around them for something, anything to fix the problems hanging in the air between them.

“Hit me, Joe.” Booker says, as if he’s discovered the solution to all the worlds problems, desperation bleeding from his words into his posture, his eyes.

“No.” Joe says.

But that’s not the answer Booker was looking for, and he’s not going to stop there, Nile realizes. He’s looking for salvation in violence, and he’s going to get it, one way or another.

Bookers fist flies towards Joe’s face, and Nile turns away in anticipation of the blood and spit that usually follows a hit like that.

But it doesn’t come, and neither does the sound of knuckles making contact. Instead, Joe’s hand is wrapped around Booker’s fist, mere inches away from the breakable curve of his nose. 

“Don’t, please.” Joe says, lowering both of their hands, gentle as can be.

But either Booker isn’t listening, or he doesn’t care that Joe won’t indulge his fist fight: his other hand is moving before Joe’s fingers have fully released him. 

He’s breathing harder than he should be.

This time, the blow connects (though Nile suspects that Joe could’ve stopped it easily if he’d wanted to) and Joe’s head snaps back with the force. Booker pulls into himself, feet shifting from offense to defense, while he waits for Joe to regain his bearings. 

A hand on her shoulder stops her from moving forward, before she’d even noticed her own momentum. Andy is a step behind her, shaking her head, when she glances back. 

Joe shoves the back of his hand underneath his nose, pulls it away smeared with blood. He shoves the hand towards Booker, more of a ‘do you see what you did?’ than a threat. Booker shrugs, raises his fists to protect his face.

He should’ve protected his legs.

It only takes one well-aimed kick before Bookers knee breaks with a sickening pop. He goes backwards with a bitten off cry, breathing heavily through the pain.

Booker struggles to a sitting position, shoving his hands behind him to ease the pressure off his healing knee. By the time he manages to get his ass under him, his already greasy hair is falling forward into new sweat, and the harsh breathing hasn’t lessened at all.

Nile doesn’t think that has anything to do with the pain, or the fight.

She takes a step back, heels catching on the cracked asphalt. This isn’t something she should be watching, this isn’t something she should know about. This is family business, and she is at best the second cousin that got dragged on the family trip because mom said so. 

Joe crouches down in front of Booker, catches his chin in the hand still smeared with blood. He pulls up until Booker meets his eye, until Booker is looking up at him at an angle that can’t be comfortable.

“You can’t fix this, Book.” He says, slow and sad. “You hurt us, and there are consequences. Hurting you back won’t make it go away, apologies won’t make it go away.” 

Joe released Bookers jaw, and drops back onto his ass gracelessly, so that he’s looking Booker straight in the eye, on the same level. Booker looks down, away.

“You’re my brother and I love you, but I can’t forgive you.” Joe sounds exhausted, “Someday I will. Someday we all will.”

Booker makes a noise, high and hurt. His head hangs low between his now healed knees, arms wrapped protectively around himself.

“Someday, we will forgive you, Book.” Joe repeats, “And I hope you stick around for when that day comes.”

———

Nile watches the weeds poking through the cracked surface of the parking lot. She doesn’t watch Nicky pull Joe up from the ground, doesn’t watch the two of them hug (briefly, ever so briefly).

She doesn’t watch Nicky wipe the blood off Joe’s face, and she doesn’t watch Joe whisper something in Nicky’s ear. 

She doesn’t watch Andy’s face as they walk into the grocery store, leaving Booker sitting on the ground. Doesn’t watch Andy look back (once, twice, three times). She doesn’t watch Nicky look forward only, fixing his eyes on the ‘AIR CONDITIONING UNITS SOLD OUT’ sign taped haphazardly to the door. Doesn’t watch Joe start to look back, catching himself at the last minute and grabbing Nicky’s hand instead.

It’s not her place, not yet. 

——-

Booker’s still there, when they return to the van with enough groceries to last them through a few days.

The fading sunlight catches his back, leaving his face shadowed where he still sits, not even an inch difference between where they left him.

Nicky pulls open the back door of the van, distributing their purchases between the cooler and the wire basket shoved between the drivers and passengers seats. 

Booker doesn’t move, while they all settle into the van. He doesn’t move when Nile claims the front seat for the first time the entire trip.

She rolls down her window, watches his back shift with every breath he takes. Watches his breath catch when Andy calls his name.

“Let’s move it, Book.” Andy says, “You don’t get out of this that easily.”

Nile shifts in her seat, so that she can watch Booker climb into the van in the rearview. He climbs over Nicky’s extended legs, to get to the way back seat. He settles awkwardly into the middle seat, that had previously been Nile’s (and god, does it feel good to see someone else forced into that seat).

There’s a sigh from the middle seat, and Nile glances over to Joe, who’s running a hand over his eyes. 

“Do you want me to move the cooler,” Joe asks, glancing at Booker, “So you can have a window seat?” 

Booker shakes his head, but even through the mirror, Nile doesn’t miss the small smile.

Olive branch extended; Olive branch accepted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up soon on america's favorite non-american american road trip: potato guns, and nile learning more about her new family and where she fits into everything


End file.
